Lords of the Realm I tweaks

[WorMzy]

Lords of the Realm I ships with a launcher .exe for Windows, so Boxtron doesn't work without explicitly specifying where to find the game. DosBox starts up from "$steamapps/common/Lords of the Realm I/English/DOSBOX/Launcher", so we need to mount C: relative from there.

Besides this, game seems to run fine with default settings, although the game does ship with various conf files (notably dosboxLords1.conf and dosboxLords1_single.conf), defining these in the tweaks file doesn't generate particularly different generated confs (maybe I'm declaring them wrong?):

defaults:

# Generated by Boxtron
# Based on args to Windows version of DOSBox:
# ['-c', 'mount C "../../Lords of the Realm I"', '-c', 'C:', '-c', 'lords.exe', '-c', 'exit']

[sdl]
# fullscreen=true
# output=opengl
# autolock=false

[autoexec]
mount C "../../Lords of the Realm I"
C:
lords.exe
exit

With confs:

# Generated by Boxtron
# Based on args to Windows version of DOSBox:
# ['-conf', '../../Lords of the Realm I/dosboxLords1.conf', '-conf', '../../Lords of the Realm I/dosboxLords1_single.conf', '-noautoexec', '-c', 'mount C "../../Lords of the Realm I"', '-c', 'C:', '-c', 'lords.exe', '-c', 'exit']

[sdl]
# fullscreen=true
# output=opengl
# autolock=false

[render]
# aspect: Do aspect correction for games using 320x200 resolution.
#         Read more: https://www.dosbox.com/wiki/Dosbox.conf#aspect
# scaler: Specifies which scaler is used to enlarge and enhance low resolution
#         modes, before any scaling done through OpenGL.
#         Read more: https://www.dosbox.com/wiki/Dosbox.conf#scaler
# aspect=false
# scaler=normal2x

[autoexec]
mount C "../../Lords of the Realm I"
C:
lords.exe
exit

TBH, the audio seems glitchier /with/ the confs specified, although this may just be a nocebo effect? It runs fine with defaults, so that's what I'm including in the pull request.

[dreamer]

The change itself: it's fine, I'll merge it in in a moment, thank you! :)

Usually, the sound is less glitchy when original conf is used. Can you paste the content of boxtron_auto.conf after starting with/without conf files passed? Also, maybe let's check which of .conf files has mixer section inside.

Another reason for glitchiness might be MIDI (if the game detects MIDI support automatically - you can test this by muting Timidity while the game is running using e.g. pavucontrol).

[WorMzy]

Thanks for merging, and the feedback. :)

I don't have a Timidity instance running, so I guess we can rule out midi shenanigans.

With no confs specified, my boxtron_auto.conf looks like this:

# Generated by Boxtron
# This file is re-created on every run

[sdl]
fullscreen=true
fullresolution=2560x1440
output=opengl
autolock=false
waitonerror=true

[render]
aspect=true
scaler=normal3x

[cpu]
core=auto
cputype=auto
cycles=max 95%

[sblaster]
sbtype=sb16
sbbase=220
irq=7
dma=1
hdma=5

With the confs specified, I have a few additional options (so I guess I was declaring them right after all!):

# Generated by Boxtron
# This file is re-created on every run

[sdl]
fullscreen=true
fullresolution=2560x1440
output=opengl
autolock=false
waitonerror=true

[render]
aspect=true
scaler=normal3x

[cpu]
core=auto
cputype=auto
cycles=max 95%

[mixer]
nosound=false
rate=22050
blocksize=2048
prebuffer=10

[sblaster]
sbtype=sb16
sbbase=220
irq=7
dma=1
hdma=5

[dos]
xms=true
ems=true
umb=true

It looks like these mixer settings were the old (pre-0.74) defaults, which is odd because the game ships with dosbox 0.74. For me, this explains the difference in behaviour, since without these confs setting the mixer options, dosbox will default to rate=44100, blocksize=1024 and prebuffer=20 and "produce more fluent sound playback".

I should note, however, that I'm using dosbox-staging, and haven't tested whether these audio glitches occur in the stable 0.74 dosbox release.

[dreamer]

I should note, however, that I'm using dosbox-staging, and haven't tested whether these audio glitches occur in the stable 0.74 dosbox release.

That's nice to hear :) The test release, that was announced/distributed with the Boxtron 0.5.2 or newer test release (which was uploaded to Discord only so far IIRC)?

[WorMzy]

Just the one distributed alongside Boxtron 0.5.2, I'm not on discord so I wasn't aware of that one.